A pop a day keeps boredom away!

As I was flipping through the Zoku Ice Pops book the other day, one thing that caught my eye was a recipe for peanut butter quick shell — a peanut butter coating that hardens upon contact with the ice pops. The secret ingredient is coconut oil, which is solid at room temperature and is therefore responsible for the hardening. I had to try it.

The book says to use a double boiler to melt together equal parts peanut butter and coconut oil. Since I’m lazy and I already knew I wanted to drizzle the topping onto my pops (rather than dip them), I chose to melt the peanut butter and the coconut oil directly in the sandwich bag that I meant to use as my drizzling tool. For roughly a tablespoon of each ingredient, I microwaved for 20 seconds on high, then I squished it around in the bag until it was well mixed.

Once my pops were frozen, I snipped a tiny corner off of the sandwich bag (and I do mean tiny — the shell mixture is very liquid and flows quickly, so a small opening is key). Then I just drizzled to my heart’s content:

Guess which pop I ate?

I’m really happy with these pops. The coconut oil didn’t seem to alter the taste of the peanut butter much (if at all), so it offered a slightly salty counterpoint to the sweet chocolate pops. Plus, they felt quite delicious and decadent. I can’t wait to try more flavor combinations.